Like many media outlets, the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to re-examine our content output and evaluate what was working, and what we could be doing better. As part of that assessment (and after a number of viewer surveys), we aimed our focus at developing content for an audience much younger than public television’s typical viewership.
That was digital producer Payton Knobeloch’s first step toward Flyover Culture. What was once a backburner idea for a podcast about famous pop culture in Indiana slowly transformed into a new video series that aims to explore less of the works themselves and more of the communities responding to them.
At the time of submitting this, Flyover Culture is in the latter half of its first season, and the team has produced episodes on video game speedrunning, an Illinois-based art collective, an urban legend about Vikings in Minnesota, and even the worldwide shortage of Pokémon Cards.
The channel has gained a small but loyal following in its first few months, and we’re planning on even bigger guests and stories in the future.